Family wasn't an accident. She is tiny for an 11-year-old and quick to startle. And which she fixed. They are true New Yorkers. She lives in a house run by a married couple. She was often tired. I mean, whether you're poor--, Andrea Elliott: --or you're wealthy, (LAUGH) like, you know. And you just have to know that going in and never kid yourself that it has shifted. Dasani Coates photographed in September last year. And this is a current that runs through this family, very much so, as you can see by the names. "This is so and so." It was a high poverty neighborhood to a school where every need is taken care of. All you could buy at the local bodega at that time was Charlie. (LAUGH) You know? Each spot is routinely swept and sprayed with bleach and laid with mousetraps. And, you know, I think that there's, in the prose itself, tremendous, you know, I think, sort of, ethical clarity and empathy and humanization. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. And her principal had this idea that she should apply to a school that I had never heard of called the Milton Hershey School, which is a school in Hershey, Pennsylvania that tries to reform poor children. No, I know. (LAUGH) Because they ate so much candy, often because they didn't have proper food. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. And there's so much to say about it. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope Andrea Elliott: I met Dasani while I was standing outside of Auburn Family Residence, which is a city run, decrepit shelter, one of two city run shelters that were notorious for the conditions that children were forced to live in with their families. And even up until 2018 was the last study that I saw that looked at this, that looked at the city's own poverty measure, which takes into account things like food stamps and stuff, nearly half of New York City residents, even as late as 2018, were living near or below the poverty line in a city that is so defined by wealth. And that's very clear in the context of her parents here. Chris Hayes: That is such a profound point about the structure of American life and the aspirations for it. She ends up there. That, to be honest, is really home. And she became, for a moment, I wouldn't say celebrity, but a child who was being celebrated widely. "What were you thinking in this moment? We could have a whole podcast about this one (LAUGH) issue. They cough or sometimes mutter in the throes of a dream. And it was just a constant struggle between what Dasani's burdens have imposed on her and the limitless reach of her potential if she were only unburdened. Her polo shirt and khakis have been pressed with a hair straightener, because irons are forbidden at the Auburn shelter. And then I wanted to find a target in New York, a good focal point in New York. Have Democrats learned them? I was comfortable with that as a general notion of what I should be doing with my work, because I think that is our job as journalists. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. It's something that I talked about a lot with Supreme and Chanel. A movie has scenes. It's why do so many not? And I think what I would say is that there are no easy answers to this. Nonetheless, she landed on the honor roll that fall. But nonetheless, my proposal was to focus on Dasani and on her siblings, on children. They wound up being placed at Auburn. To an outsider, living in Fort Greene, you might think, "Oh, that's the kid that lives at the homeless shelter. And so I did what I often do as a journalist is I thought, "You know, let me find a universal point of connection. Some girls may be kind enough to keep Dasanis secret. Baby Lee-Lee has yet to learn about hunger, or any of its attendant problems. But because of the nature of how spread out Chicago was, the fact that this was not a moment of gentrification in the way that we think about it now, particularly in the, sort of, post-2000 comeback city era and then the post-financial crisis, that the kids in that story are not really cheek by jowl with all of the, kind of, wealth that is in Chicago. Web2 In an instant, she is midair, pulling and twisting acrobatically as the audience gasps at the might of this 12-year-old girl. Like, you could tell the story about Jeff Bezos sending himself into space. I had been there for a while. This is the type of fact that she recites in a singsong, look-what-I-know way. You just invest time. Radiating out from them in all directions are the eight children they share: two boys and five girls whose beds zigzag around the baby, her crib warmed by a hairdryer perched on a milk crate. And I had focused for years on the story of Islam in a post-9/11 America. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? So you mentioned There Are No Children Here. Right? Criminal justice. She's had major ups and major downs. If she cries, others answer. Just a few blocks away are different or, kind of, safer feeling, but maybe alienating also. It's on the west side just west of downtown. I can read you the quote. 4 Dasani blinks, looking out at The ground beneath her feet once belonged to them. She's passing through. And I pulled off from my shelf this old copy of Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here, which is a classic incredible book about two brothers in the Chicago housing projects in the 1980s. And I said, "Yes." What is that?" They were in drug treatment programs for most of the time that I was with them, mostly just trying to stay sober and often succeeding at it. The light noises bring no harm the colicky cries of an infant down the hall, the hungry barks of the Puerto Rican ladys chihuahuas, the addicts who wander the projects, hitting some crazy high. And my process involved them. And what was happening in New York was that we were reaching a kind of new level. The2009 financial crisis taught us hard lessons. Her parents are avid readers. It's now about one in seven. How long is she in that shelter? So it's interesting how, you know, you always see what's happening on the street first before you see it 10,000 feet above the ground in terms of policy or other things. It's a really, really great piece of work. Chris Hayes: So she's back in the city. On mornings like this, she can see all the way past Brooklyn, over the rooftops and the projects and the shimmering East River. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. But the other part is agency. She will be sure to take a circuitous route home, traipsing two extra blocks to keep her address hidden. And at that time in my career, it was 2006. Tweet us with the hashtag #WITHpod, email WITHpod@gmail.com. Dasani squints to check the date. But she told me, and she has told me many times since, that she loves the book. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. Theres nothing to be scared about.. And I found greater clarity after I left the newsroom and was more in an academic setting as I was researching this book. I live in Harlem. Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. As Dasani walks to her new school on 6 September 2012, her heart is pounding. I think what she has expressed to me, I can certainly repeat. It's important to not live in a silo. Andrea Elliott: Yeah. Dasani gazes out of the window from the one room her family of 10 shared in the Brooklyn homeless shelter where they lived for almost four years. The other thing I would say is that we love the story of the kid who made it out. Elliott writes that few children have both the depth of dishonest troubles and the height of her promise., But Dasanis story isnt about an extraordinary child who made it out of poverty. You get birthday presents. It is on the fourth floor of that shelter, at a window facing north, that Dasani now sits looking out. Now you fast forward to 2001. Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. Thats a lot on my plate.. What's also true, though, is that as places like New York City and Los Angeles and San Francisco and even Detroit and Washington, D.C. have increasingly gentrified, the experience of growing up poor is one of being in really close proximity with people who have money. And a lot of things then happen after that. We have a period where basically from the New Deal to 1980, inequality in the country shrinks and then the story, as you well know, from 1980 to now is just skyrocketing inequality. What was striking to me was how little changed. And at that time, I just had my second child and I was on leave at home in Washington, D.C. where I had grown up. Well, by the way, that really gets in the way of getting a job. Dasani Coates grew up in a family so poor, her stepfather once pawned his gold teeth to get by until their welfare benefits arrived. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. And I think showing the dignity within these conditions is part of that other lens. WebInvisible Child, highlights the life struggles of eleven-year-old Dasani Coates, a homeless child living with her family in Brooklyn, New York. There are several things that are important to know about this neighborhood and what it represents. The book is called Invisible Child. And she talked about them brutally. Clothing donations. They felt that they had a better handle on my process by then. Of all the distressing moments in Invisible Child, Andrea Elliotts book about Dasani Coates, the oldest of eight children growing up in a homeless shelter in New And, of course, not. I think that what is so striking about the New York that she was growing up in, as compared to, for instance, the New York of her mother Chanel, also named for a bottle of liquid, (LAUGH) is that Chanel grew up in East Brooklyn at a time when this was a siloed community, much like what you are describing about Henry Horner. It was really so sweet. She said, "Home is the people. Her hope for herself is to keep, as she's put it to me, her family and her culture close to her while also being able to excel.. Dasani can get lost looking out her window, until the sounds of Auburn interrupt. Of all the distressing moments in Invisible Child, Andrea Elliotts book about Dasani Coates, the oldest of eight children growing up in a homeless shelter in New Come on, says her mother, Chanel, who stands next to Dasani. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American And this book really avoids it. Dasani Coates, the 11-year-old homeless child profiled in Andrea Elliotts highly praised five-part New York Times feature, arrived on stage at Wednesdays inauguration ceremonies to serve as a poignant symbol ofin Mayor de Blasios wordsthe economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love. She felt that she left them and this is what happened. She sees out to a world that rarely sees her. She looks around the room, seeing only silhouettes the faint trace of a chin or brow, lit from the street below. Try to explain your work as much as you can." asani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. Laundry piled up. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. As Dasani grows up, she must contend with them all. It was a constant struggle. Rarely does that happen for children living in poverty like Dasani who are willing and capable but who are inundated with problems not of their own making, she says. And at one level, it's like, "It's our ethical duty to tell stories honestly and forcefully and truthfully." Her siblings, she was informed, were placed in foster care. I still have it. You have a greater likelihood of meeting someone who might know of a job or, "Hey, there's someone in my building who needs a such." And I just spent so much time with this family and that continues to be the case. Hidden in a box is Dasanis pet turtle, kept alive with bits of baloney and the occasional Dorito. Thank you! There was no sign announcing the shelter, which rises over the neighbouring projects like an accidental fortress. So thats a lot on my plate with some cornbread. You have to be from a low income family. This is an extract INVISIBLE CHILD | Kirkus Reviews Her parents survived major childhood traumas. Random House, 2021. Dasani They have learned to sleep through anything. WebRT @usaunify: When Dasani Left Home. (modern). Coca Cola had put it out a year earlier. Beyond the shelters walls, in the fall of 2012, Dasani belongs to an invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children the highest number ever recorded, in the most unequal metropolis in America. He said, "Yes. Dasani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. And it wasn't a huge amount of money as far as I know, although Legal Aid's never told me (LAUGH) exactly how much is in it. The difference is in resources. And at the same time, there's the old Janet Malcolm line about how every journalist who's, you know, not deluded will tell you what they're doing is ethically indefensible, which is not true and, kind of, hyperbolic, but scratches at something a little bit of a kernel of truth, which is that, like, there is always something intense and strange and sometimes a little hard to reckon with when you are reporting and telling the story of people who are in crisis, emergency trauma and you, yourself, are not. I mean, I think everyone knows there are a lot of poor people, particularly a lot of poor people in urban centers, although there are a lot of poor people in rural areas. And in my local bodega, they suddenly recently added, I just noticed this last night, organic milk. Public assistance. And I consider family to be Dasani's ultimate, sort of, system of survival. Poverty Isnt the Problem - Naomi Schaefer Riley, She attacked the mice. That image has stayed with me ever since because it was so striking the discipline that they showed to just walk in single file the unity, the strength of that bond, Elliott says. How you get out isn't the point. Uncovering 'The Invisible Child' with Andrea Elliott: And I could never see what the next turn would be. The bottled water had come to Brooklyns bodegas just before she was born, catching the fancy of her mother, who could not afford such indulgences. They think, "All men are created equal," creed is what distinguishes the U.S., what gives it its, sort of, moral force and righteousness in rebelling against the crown. WebIn Invisible Child, Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. Together with her siblings, Dasani has had to persevere in an environment riddled with stark inequality, hunger, violence, drug addiction and homelessness. (LAUGH) She would try to kill them every week. Some donations came in. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. It's painful. And one of the striking elements of the story you tell is that that's not the case in the case of the title character of Dasani. Before that, she had been in and out of shelters with her family. And I just wonder, like, how you thought about it as you went through this project. Her mother had grown up in a very different time. ", I think if we look at Dasani's trajectory, we see a different kind of story. 6. We suffocate them with the salt!. Only a mother could answer it, and for a while their mother was gone. It is an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequalitytold through the crucible of one remarkable girl. Dasani races back upstairs, handing her mother the bottle. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. It has more than a $17 billion endowment. And the reporter who wrote that, Andrea Elliott, wrote a series of stories about Dasani. The other thing you asked about were the major turning points. We'd love to hear from you. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. What she knows is that she has been blessed with perfect teeth. So in There Are No Children Here, you know, if you go over there to the Henry Horner Homes on the west side, you do have the United Center. But I know that I tried very, very hard at every step to make sure it felt as authentic as possible to her, because there's a lot of descriptions of how she's thinking about things. I had not ever written a book. Invisible Child chronicles the ongoing struggles of homelessness, which passes from one generation to the next in Dasanis family. When she left New York City, her loved ones lost a crucial member of the family, and in her absence, things fell apart. She looks around the room, seeing only silhouettes the faint trace of a chin or brow, lit from the street below. Now the bottle must be heated. The sound that matters has a different pitch. This is freighted by other forces beyond her control hunger, violence, unstable parenting, homelessness, drug addiction, pollution, segregated schools. Chris Hayes: Dasani is 11 years old. I have a lot of things to say.. Andrea has now written a book about Dasani. And it really was for that clientele, I believe. By the time most schoolchildren in New York City are waking up to go to school, Dasani had been working for probably two hours. There are parts of it that are painful. She is in that shelter because of this, kind of, accumulation of, you know, small, fairly common, or banal problems of the poor that had assembled into a catastrophe, had meant not being able to stay in the section eight housing. And welcome to Why Is This Happening? Even Dasanis name speaks of a certain reach. They can screech like alley cats, but no one is listening. And in all these cases, I think, like, you know, there's a duty for a journalist to tell these stories. (LAUGH) I don't know what got lost in translation there. They were-- they were eating the family's food and biting. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. And demographers have studied this and I think that we still don't really know ultimately. Chapter 42 Now a sophomore, Dasani believes that her family is desperately fractured. She could change diapers, pat for burps, check for fevers. With only two microwaves, this can take an hour. Book review: Andrea Elliott's 'Invisible Child' spotlights Then the series ran at the end of 2013. Then Jim Ester and the photographer (LAUGH) who was working with me said, "We just want to shadow you.". She knew she had to help get her siblings fed and dressed. Every morning, Dasani leaves her grandmothers birthplace to wander the same streets where Joanie grew up, playing double Dutch in the same parks, seeking shade in the same library. The bodegas were starting. She is 20 years old. This is the type of fact that nobody can know. It's available wherever you get your books. A Phil & Teds rain shell, fished from the garbage, protects the babys creaky stroller. And one thing I found really interesting about your introduction, which so summarizes the reason I feel that this story matters, is this fracturing of America. Child Nearly a year ago, the citys child protection agency had separated 34-year-old Chanel Sykes from her children after she got addicted to opioids. I think about it every day. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. I think that when you get deeper inside and when you start to really try your best to understand on a more intimate level what those conditions mean for the person that you're writing about, so you stop imposing your outsider lens, although it's always gonna be there and you must be aware of it, and you try to allow for a different perspective. What did you think then?" By the time I got to Dasani's family, I had that stack and I gave it to them. To know Dasani Joanie-Lashawn Coates to follow this childs life, from her first breaths in a Brooklyn hospital to the bloom of adulthood is to reckon with the story of New York City and, beyond its borders, with America itself. And that was a new thing for me. So there were more than 22,000 children in homeless shelters at that time in the main system. The oldest of eight kids, Dasani and her family lived in one room in a dilapidated, city-run homeless shelter in Brooklyn. But every once in a while, when by some miracle she scores a pair of Michael Jordans, she finds herself succumbing to the same exercise: she wears them sparingly, and only indoors, hoping to keep them spotless. She likes being small because I can slip through things. She imagines herself with supergirl powers. Yes. with me, your host, Chris Hayes. It wasn't a safe thing. It, sort of, conjured this new life as this new life was arriving. Whether they are riding the bus, switching trains, climbing steps or jumping puddles, they always move as one. Andrea Elliott on Twitter WebInvisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Theres nearly 1.38 million homeless schoolchildren in the U.S. About one in 12 live in New York City. And I met Dasani right in that period, as did the principal.